Nick Lappos
Thanks for the post. Hope to read more contributions from you from time to time.
Nick Lappos is Sikorsky's Assistant Chief Test Pilot. A former U.S. Army Warrant Officer and a combat veteran of Vietnam, he flew Cobra attack helicopters in D Troop, 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry. An Aerospace Engineering graduate of Georgia Tech, he came to Sikorsky Aircraft in 1973. Since then, he has flown in the YUH-60 Black Hawk program, flown the first flight and structural shakedown of the S-76, the "Shadow" cockpit research aircraft, the adaptive fuel control experimental aircraft, and the "Fantail" fan-in-fin demonstrator. He is now assigned to the RAH-66 Comanche project, where he is part of the pilot team flying the shakedown and envelope expansion.
In 1988, the Society of Experimental Test Pilots awarded Nick their Tenhoff Award for the most outstanding paper at the Annual Symposium. The American Helicopter Society awarded Nick their Feinberg award as most outstanding pilot for his contribution to the understanding of maneuverability in 1989 and again in 1998 (as part of the Comanche Team), and in 1994 he was named a Fellow of the Society. He was a member of the American Helicopter Society's Handling Qualities committee and AGARD Working Group #19 (Functional Agility), and is currently a member of the NASA/FAA Air Traffic Management R&D Executive Steering Committee.
Nick has written a number of technical papers, and articles for magazines such as "Rotor and Wing," "Interavia," and "Defense Helicopter." He holds 15 U.S. and a number of foreign patents on flight and engine controls and cockpit displays.
Photo of Apache during initial flight tests.